In this episode, Teri-Denise reflects on the importance of personal growth, letting go of negativity, and breaking unhealthy patterns, even when they're inherited. Inspired in part by the classic 1922 film Nosferatu, and subsequent 2024 remake, she encourages listeners to embrace reimagining their truest self.

Mentioned This Epsiode:

Youtube: My Generation (Live 1967) - The Who

Website: Nosferatu (1922)

Website: Nosferatu (2024)

Hello there.

This is Terry Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of Ripper, an LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in around and beyond the community of Michigan's capital city.

Hello.

Yada da da da.

I like music a lot.

That's right.

I like the who I do.

How are you doing?

I am being very interesting today to myself even sometimes I am variable with self, with my brain and I try to get through my day by just going with the flow, I guess you could say.

And it's just like, oh, there's a. I don't know what's happening around me.

The energies are expanding.

Well, that was a very rude way that that person looked at me or said something to me and it's just like, all right, we're just gonna go with it and not even pretend that it didn't happen.

It's just like, all right, just moving on.

K. Bye.

Sometimes you just have to accept the self fulfilling aptitude of moving through and moving on.

And a lot of times if we are carrying too much on ourselves then it becomes very difficult to do so.

It becomes a very, very wearying and and heavy struggle to keep producing a better, better attitude that you can have with yourself.

And then you're gonna have to have a better attitude to even just deal with other people that are going through whatever they're going through.

There's no way to do it other than to just accept and move on a lot of times.

So with that I actually wanted to get into some spooky stuff.

I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna have quite the thing to say about a couple of films, very German expressionistic films shall we say.

But the modern versions of some of these old German films that actually they generationally.

I love the fact that people have been using and reimagining A lot of older films that are now are allowed.

They're just basically kind of gotten out of a vault I guess you could say.

And they are allowed to be allowed reused or redistributed.

A lot of people make their own versions of the films or will take the characters and rewrite scripts.

So one of those films is Nosferatu.

I believe it was Robert Eggers version of Nosferatu, which is an old German film.

And I really appreciated the essence of the film.

There was so much going on within it.

I personally appreciated the use of We'll Just say there wasn't an overuse of modern technology and like a bunch of CGI or anything like that.

They stayed very true to German Expressionism with a lot of use of shadow and light and a lot of just silhouette play and just this overall uneasy feeling about there's something coming, but I don't know what.

When is it going to happen?

We've got a lot of long shots that happen in the film as well, and a lot of things where it's just you all of a sudden started looking for things and you're like, where's it at?

Where's it at?

If you're not familiar with Nosferatu, it is a story about a vampire and.

And that's about it.

It's a vampire called Nosferatu.

And that has been one of the bases for a lot of monster stories throughout the.

Over the century.

And this particular version was great and they modernized it in a very, very great way.

I enjoyed also the fact that there was a lot of staging that took place that was very.

It looked like it was on a theatrical stage.

And I realized after listening to some interviews with Eggers that he comes from a background in a theatrical.

A stage theater family, and it all made sense then.

I'm like, he's part of the generational crew there.

That's him taking.

Taking this stuff from his.

His parents and whatnot, and using what he had learned over the many years of his life and adapting certain to film in a different kind of way.

He also wrote a lot when he was younger, too.

And I believe this version of his Nosferatu had been written maybe 20 years ago and it had just finally gotten.

He finally did.

He did this thing where a lot of people have realized that they can come back to work, that they've put in for things many, many years later, and it suddenly pays off.

It just this passion project that somebody has worked on for years and years.

And you just keep getting the nose.

The door shut in your face.

And all of a sudden he.

He worked on a bunch of different other projects and people were like, bravo.

This is it.

This crazy film that we've seen.

Is this great.

Yes.

You're.

You're bringing the studios a lot of money, keep doing that.

And so, you know, he gets greenlit or he gets allowed to produce and direct and write more and everything like.

And everything that comes with those.

That area of being greenlit.

Greenlit basically means that you are a go.

That somebody's back there with a bunch of money, with Mr. Moneybags back there going like, you can do this.

I have the funding for you.

Go ahead and do it.

You are allowed.

You've got studio time, you've got, you know, editors and all this backed up and ready for you to go.

You've got the aok.

You are literally greenlit to go, as in traffic.

So he started getting greenlit on a bunch of different projects.

And then all of a sudden it occurred to him one day and it was like, I really want to.

Can I do this finally?

And it's.

Sometimes things are on the back burner.

They stay there forever, it seems, and get to come back to some of your work.

Hopefully that's kind of the dream.

But all of a sudden something happens and something breaks and you are good to go.

And that's what happened with his old passion project of Nosferatu that he had written a long time ago.

And when you stick to what you are supposed to be doing, usually if things are well aligned with you and you are working with the alignment itself, it usually will pan out very well for you and others to enjoy.

That's usually what it takes to be able to be a kind of mentor or be a help for another out there.

And even for your own sake, it helps you to grasp reality and really keep holding on to what's true to you and what is a genuine emotion or motive even for you to keep going.

Sometimes, you know, you get out there, the head gets a little big, maybe the super ego or the ID gets a little bit out of control.

And a lot of times that usually eats people alive.

At times where you just.

You think you get a little bit arrogant and you think that you can not be touched by anything.

And you have to understand where your true center is and where in that area of your own personal life and what your motivations and intentions are, as long as you're staying true to who and what you were trying to project out in the first place, honestly.

And as long as it's not hurting another individual or hurting yourself or anything like that, in that frame of any negativity, you should be fine.

Everything should be going swimmingly for you.

And if it's not, it might be one of those things where you have to take a look at how you can move beyond what's being an obstacle in your way and how you can get that just detracted or negated and neutralized.

If there's too much toxicity around you and you've got too many naysayers and you just know that you're not doing anything wrong, you're doing everything that you have possibly been able to do correctly or at least to the best of your ability.

And you keep getting the no's, the naysays and the negative attitudes from others.

You gotta at some point ask yourself, why am I still around, whatever that is, why am I still accepting the, that negative attitude or that negative feedback from others?

And then that can open up another journey for yourself and for your endeavors.

And a lot of times that can turn out to be better than it could have ever been with those who had been nacing you in the first place or been the toxic energies around you.

You got to let go sometimes of what it is that makes you think that you should stay there.

I mean, that's virtually what a virus kind of does or like a parasite does something, something that gets into your system and it tries to trick you into making it believe, in making you believe that it should stay there or should be there.

And you're like, wait a minute, but something in my butt is trying to fight it off and it's, it's true to reality.

You don't, you shouldn't have be fighting at all with, with these efforts that should be for yourself to be a positive, progressive thing.

A lot of great impacts that happen to people come from a place where there's been progress made in persons, their family connections with family or friends or just caretakers, some kind of mentors.

And that comes from being able to finally be honest with yourself and say I, I reject either the negativity, the, the malicious treatment, any kind of feelings that keep getting me irked.

I don't care how close you might feel or be.

There is just something that is not going to help me and that hasn't been helping me see a better placement for myself in my future.

Sometimes you just have to just leave the situation.

If you can't right that second, you have to make a goal set out for yourself.

You've got to just keep projecting a better place for yourself to be.

And I don't mean in this sense that you lose all, all present reality to substitute illusion for.

I don't mean that fully in that sense, but your imagination can help out a lot to help you get to another place and project a better, better view for yourself.

If your present and your past have reflected a not so good state to be in.

And a lot of these things come from carrying burdens.

A lot of burdens come from generational burdens.

So there might be, let's say, some financial illiteracy going on in your family.

And it's just something that's been carried over for generations.

You'll hear stories like, oh, your Uncle Bill never knew how to pay a bill, or something silly like that.

And people just.

They'll take that in and then think that, okay, that's just the way that things are.

And it's like, no, you gotta stop.

You gotta be the one to finally say, now, this is.

This is me.

I don't want to actually carry on whatever that was going on back then.

I want to take the effort to make sure that this is not a cycle that repeats itself ever again, at least within my life.

And if it helps others around you, good, great.

That's excellent.

But for somebody to try to get into your way or become a burden while you are trying to heal from certain generational negative cycles, that should tell you right there that you need to really get.

Get out.

Get another viewpoint and get into another space that can allow yourself to see that there's might be a grander, brighter, better way to.

To help you adjust to exactly what it is that you should have and should want to have.

There's no reason that a person should wake up ever feeling like they need to struggle to get to a better place.

There is no reason that, you know, a lot of people in America come from.

And my family had a lot of different.

I have a lot of different cultures in my family.

So I am.

I've got a lot of many different people from a lot around the world.

And so there's, you know, generation a couple, a few generations down from slavery, but there's other people in the family that took it upon themselves that it was.

It's just.

They kicked that stuff to the curb and were like, oh, okay, I can do this now without somebody telling me that I can't.

And it wasn't even a second thought.

It was just.

I was already doing what I was doing.

But now I.

Now that these particular hindrances have removed themselves from the way I can actually claim what it is I'm doing legally and say, no, I have a say in this.

It's written.

Here's all the material, here's all the information that is mine, and that's what's going on now.

Owned.

I own that.

That is mine.

I am not being owned by another that's not a possibility.

We're not doing that here.

This is not a thing that will ever happen, and it's not going to happen for my progeny.

So we're going to cut that cycle off too.

No.

For any and everything that I've said this to others and I said my, I say that my ancestors didn't go through what they went through.

For me to have to struggle or to have the same kind of struggles.

We're.

I mean, you're a human.

You're going to struggle with certain things.

Okay.

But to have to go through a generational cycle of being a slave to another person.

No, absolutely not.

So then there's other cycles that also need to be stopped.

They.

They need to be put out, and the light needs to be put out of it.

Will just say maybe even, you know, just tough relationships with people.

You know, sometimes there's, there's been an over acceptance of being treated poorly and overcompensating for what you think you, you're supposed to be.

For some.

I know I've, I've been going through mine.

Healing processes throughout this, and I've realized that that had been a part of a cycle of mine, is that I was over accepting things because I felt like I was supposed to.

That was coming out of multiple areas of just, well, one being a woman, unfortunately, feeling like I'm, I'm the one that should.

I, I should, but I should accept these bad things that are happening and just calm you down and everything should be okay.

And I'm just gonna sit here and okay, whatever you said.

And then, well, well, we could have a better day.

Okay.

You know, the voice of reason and hope.

And after a while I was like, well, now that I'm sitting here alone without anybody around me that I have to basically suffer through, I started to realize that was the negativity that was in my life that was leading to more negativity.

So it's like, ouch with you, you know, and no more.

You got to put up the, put up the cross signs.

You're like, no, you may not.

You shall not pass as Gandalf says.

No, you're, you know, and then you, you go with Maxine Waters, you know, into what she says in reclaiming her time.

So I started saying that too.

Thank you, Congresswoman.

I reclaimed my time.

I reclaimed all and any of the over compensating and the over efforts that I was putting towards any and everybody for no good reason other than feeling like that's what I was supposed to do.

Because that was just a negative generational cycle that had been a proponent of me not realizing or forgetting that I actually had goals as a person, that I actually had set out to be something completely unique to myself.

I had, back in first grade, Mrs. Glick's class, she had us write out what we wanted to do when we were older.

And I believe I put a few things down, one of which I chose simply because it was something my mother was doing and that was to be in law enforcement.

But that wasn't really what I wanted.

I was just putting that down because I was like, well, it's my mother, so I want to be what she wants to be.

But truly, the other bits that I put down were to be in entertainment and to be a fashion designer.

And those were my true areas of comfort, comfort and goals.

Like I had set out to do those things.

And then I also wanted to be a ballet dancer, some dancer of some kind.

Fancy.

But I had to realize that, much like Eggers, I had to come back to things after going through a very long period of time in my life, in my adult life, and forgetting who I was because I was so busy trying to cater to everybody else's idea of what I should or shouldn't be.

And I don't even know how I got mixed up in that with my own life, in my own brain, because I certainly am not usually that type of person.

But, you know, life hits you in funny ways when you lose a lot of people all of a sudden, especially a lot of young people in your life.

Sometimes you just don't know how to deal with it.

And you kind of lose yourself a little bit because you've lost some of your.

Your strengths, your strongholds.

You've lost your, I guess, your feedback.

People around you that you could throw things at and they could throw things at you, and you could keep each other grounded.

And I lost a lot of people like that.

And I had to realize that also while kicking out these generational cycles that are negative, I had to accept the fact that I never had a station of grieving, of a real period of grieving, because it's just, man, sometimes they just.

There's just no time, which is terrible.

But you have to make time to do that, because you really need to understand that you appreciated what you did out of others, but also needing to realize that they appreciated something out of you as well, which is what that connection and those senses of love and longing for those people in your lives are.

So there's a better way of viewing your past to help to heal past issues.

And a lot of times those are the generational issues, but also with the grieving issues.

And not necessarily just a person, another person, but sometimes it's a pet, sometimes it's just an action, and then sometimes it is kind of like your old goals, something that you were interested in ever.

I don't understand why it's such a weird thing that people had a.

A misunderstanding or just they couldn't understand why people started to collect a bunch of Legos.

And I got it.

I understood that because you're, you know, you get to a certain age and you've.

You've worked and you got money and you're like, wait a minute, what is something I've always wanted?

Oh, my gosh, the Glow in the Dark island ghost creature.

I always wanted that.

Now I can buy it.

And this is what a lot of people have been doing with their time and with their hobbies and whatnot.

So it's a great thing to keep, to not stay in the past, but to definitely reflect upon what you can learn and what you can achieve and take for yourself, for the future and the present for yourself, and how you can manage those negative things that might happen randomly in your morning or during your day or some wacky, rude things that could happen, and then just transmuting that energy into something else completely so that you're not carrying other person's burdens with you and not impacting your next generations at all.

And those generations can be even an idea.

It can be even, you know, the way that you reach out or impact another person.

Sometimes those things last for a lifetime.

Just like with the old saying of, you can teach a man to fish and they can fish for the rest of their lives.

So with that, I'm going to take my generational cycle and actually probably get on a real cycle, as in a bicycle, and pedal away.

But stay tuned for another day with me, Terry Denise, on Ripper.

I hope you have a good one.

Thanks for tuning in to Ripper.

You can find more about this and other LCC Connect [email protected].